OSC needs to end this love affair with his own dialogue and decide if he is writing literature or theater. Never heard such insipid, useless, circular conversations between fictional characters. Except in other OSC books of course.

I'm not sure how to rate this books. There were times in the book I did not like it at all, but by the end it all came together for me and I really enjoyed it. That being said, it wouldn't be an easy book for me to recommend.

1 - I found white, Mormon Orson Scott Card writing a cast of black characters to be difficult and uncomfortable. He has an afterword where he explains the premise - a black friend of his challenged him to write a book with the main character being black and offered help in getting it right. That would have been helpful in the introduction. I felt like the two of them undertook the project to comment on race in our country - and the fact that it was uncomfortable could make for some good discussion points - I still think the information needed to be at the beginning.

2 - This had a very different feel to it than most of Card's books, particularly in the middle. Honestly, there were times in the middle of the book where I felt like Card was channeling Neil Gaiman in American Gods.

3 - I enjoyed the Midsummer's Night Dream tie-in by the end of the book but it took me awhile to get into it.

After reading Ender's Game and The Lost Gate, I was looking forward to reading yet another spectacular novel from Orson Scott Card...and was severely disappointed. The first half of the book is intriguing and just the right amount of disturbing (thoughts of killing the baby in his hands? A woman giving birth after only one hour of pregnancy, and the baby being taken away in a grocery bag?), though a lot of it does seem random. Other aspects are odd as well; namely, the extremely sassy black community, where Card again and again emphasizes the fact that they are black. Halfway through the book, however, the intriguing, promising world Card has woven becomes just...stupid. I hate to use that word, since I was so impressed with his writing before, but that's the only word that perfectly fits it. It seems so random and childish. One of my personal pet peeves is when the main character has been trying to unravel the mystery the plot circles around for the entirety of the book, and one character just appears and tells him, all at once, everything he needs to know. A much better angle would be for everything to piece together, not at once, but slowly, eventually leading to a revelation. But no; everything that made the plot interesting suddenly vanishes when one character enters and describes everything, repeatedly, as though Card is desperately trying to get his audience to believe and buy into the plot. After that, the book loses all of the mystery and intrigue that had kept me reading it, and delves into a world of fantasy that is utterly ridiculous. It is as though Card changed his mind halfway through and had to go back and rearrange some of the main points, making them all fit unnaturally with one another, and not lead up well to the next half at all.

All in all, it was a disappointment, and not worth reading. All geniuses fail at least once, however, and I guess this was his one fail.

Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite authors.
Magic Street is not one of my favorite Orson Scott Card novels.
It was creative and enjoyable, but not awesome.

I'm not sure why the ratings are so low. This is my favorite Orson Scott Card book so far.

this is just too stupid to continue I just gotta give up its just not making a bit of sense

The afterword is basically a great explanation of why this book gets one star. It's a white privileged Mormon writing about middle class black America. Although e tried hard, and according to his own explanation ran it by his black friends... It sort of has that "imagineered" quality to it. He also explains that the book basically grew out of a bunch of separate random ideas he twisted together. It reads like it.

I generally love card... Horrible personal views aside... But this one was forced and disjointed and I just didn't care about anyone or anything happening in the book.

Meh.
Fairies don't care about people
Lots of clever stuff.
But from the baby in a plastic bag,
It's mostly weird.

Orson Scott Card had such a unique way of spinning familiar tales into something fun and new. This was an interesting page turner, for sure.

Lectura intensa si las hay… Tiene un comienzo que me dejó estupefacta, con una crudeza que vi en pocas obras del género fantasía.
Fascinada con todo lo que iba leyendo durante aproximadamente el primer 30% del libro. Luego, cuando comienza con las referencias a las obras de Shakespeare, entré en una vorágine de lectura desesperada por terminarlo y ver a dónde iba a parar tanta locura literaria.

Llegando al final, repuntó en organicidad, permitiendo que (al fin!) como lectora, pueda apreciar la sustancia de los personajes principales. Y la frutillita de este postre que combina trama de fantasía con narrativa al estilo novela negra noir, fue la parte de Agradecimientos.
Allí el autor explica cómo fue que surgió la idea que dio origen a esta novela y me terminó de cerrar la sensación de que más que leer una historia con un ritmo determinado, estaba frente a fragmentos de historia intensas, narradas en la cronología de la vida de su protagonista: Mack Street.

La verdad que fue una lectura muy amena, fluída, pero por sobre todo, muy interesante. La historia me pareció muy bien escrita, con unos personajes que se las traen y que cada uno, en lo suyo, tuvo su peso necesario. Una historia de hadas? Una historia de "negros"? Una historia onírica? Creo que es todo eso y más...3⭐ y 1/2 para mí

Una historia que me mantuvo entretenido pero, a medida que pasaban las páginas, tenía ganas de que se termine: no hacía más que empeorar ☹️

Algunos personajes resultaron carismáticos, con otros tuve una desconexión total, sin entender porqué hacían lo que hacían.

Creo que tiene que ver con que el libro plantea una relación muy cercana con “Sueño de una noche de verano” de Shakespeare, y me perdí muchas referencias.

Algunas escenas se me hicieron súper cinematográficas, sobre todo al final, pero lamentablemente a esa altura ya no me importaba mucho lo que iba a pasar.